Weekend Stuff: Stuff and More Stuff

We had a death in our family, this week. My grandmother’s sister, Helen, passed away from complications related to being old. (This isn’t snarky. She was old and it was complicated.)

Helen was the matriarch of our family — a woman who had children late in life, ran a successful Avon business, and was an all-around nice woman. She loved me, and told me so as recently as October when I saw her for the last time. She called me Lauren, which is very old-school in my life and throws me back to the 70s. Lauren, my given name, is reserved for family and nuns.

Helen believed in family and soap operas. She believed in Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. She believed in Chinese buffets and family picnics in the summertime. She was my mother’s godmother and was a gentle caretaker to many generations of children in my family.

She is loved and will be loved forever.

ii.

My high school boyfriend had a baby. (Wait. Let me rephrase that. His lovely wife had a baby.) He helped, of course, and is now left speechless by the monumental shift in his life.